About underdogs and top dogs, and a wannabe top dog...

Yesterday's posting referred to a fictitious illiterate working-class "auntie", a cleaner, who -- in a Channel 5 TV serial -- was bullied, and taken to court, by a smarty-pouty young woman lawyer over lunchtime "tissue pack chope-ing".

Well, the local TV news today carried a report of a real-life illiterate working-class auntie, a foodstall hawker, who won her case against a big corporation -- Marina Bay Sands (MBS) -- in a dispute over her jackpot machine winning at the casino there.

First, this YouTube video clip which nicely gives the saga's background:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np6PZ7ljfd0

Briefly, hawker Choo Hong Eng, 58, claimed she had won over $400,000 from a jackpot machine at MBS. She had on her side witnesses unrelated to her, and apparently CCTV footage too. But MBS said there was a machine malfunction (ever since Janet Jackson's wardrobe "malfunction", this word has become very versatile). The machine, it said, paid a maximum sum of only $50,000 in cash. What she saw on its screen were the words "C-A-R". MBS was prepared to pay her the 50K and a sports car valued at over $250,000.

She stuck to her guns. No one-arm-bandit was going to get away with robbing her (well, strictly, such machines these days have just buttons, but I digress...).

She has also become famous for her words to the effect that "I may be illiterate but I know that C-A-S-H has four letters and C-A-R has three letters".

The latest news out today is that MBS will pay her the $416,000 she said she won (she said she will donate half that sum to charity). One up for the underdog! See this CNA news story:

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1164343/1/.html

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From the underdog to a top dog:

This picture above was sent to me by a colleague at the office. My own dog Killer tried to assert his top dogginess by claiming his human master's lounge chair:

Minutes after this picture was taken, he was put in his place... as the underdog.

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Last item. Is it just me, or do you also find this headline below funny (as in peculiar as well as in ha-ha)?

I was imagining National Environment Agency (NEA) staff coming to my home and asking me, "Choose your weapon... boxing gloves, knives, guns, or maybe Shelltox? We'll give you just one lesson.

"You gotta be quick on the draw too... your mozzie adversaries are very fast and can spray you with the stuff before you can even say SHELLSHOCKED."